


solus rex

by Anemoi



Category: Football RPF
Genre: Android AU, M/M, Robot AU, robot humor, this also falls under Extreme Totti, weirdly realistic football playing robot au?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-20
Updated: 2018-04-20
Packaged: 2019-04-25 07:20:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,893
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14373747
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Anemoi/pseuds/Anemoi
Summary: The city of Rome built him to serve them.This is what he was told, this is what he knew, this is what he accepted.





	solus rex

**Author's Note:**

  * For [brampersandon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/brampersandon/gifts).



> I have a feeling it delved into satire a little bit and then careened across several moods but in all sincerity, its Francesco/Roma
> 
> also im SORRY caitlin, he probably meets alessa in the national team and bangs him. is another story. waves paws

The city of Rome built him to serve them.

 

This is what he was told, this is what he knew, this is what he accepted.

  


-

  


  He had a serial number, behind his ear where it wouldn’t show. It felt like a scar, or at least that’s what Vincenzo said when he let him touch it on one rare occasion. He didn’t know what a scar felt like, except that. Sometime during his lifespan he’d developed a habit of rubbing it when he was thinking, or when he was annoyed.

“They give you feelings?” Vincenzo asked, when they were still getting acquainted. “Seems counterintuitive.”

“That’s a long word,” he replied. “I didn’t think you’d know a word like “counterintuitive”.”

Vincenzo kicked him on the shins. He kicked Vincenzo back. They were friends, after that, or close enough.

  


-

  


  He had, for all intents and purposes, a heart. It was a battery and not located in his chest, like human hearts were, but somewhere in his abdomen. That was the extent of his knowledge regarding his own internal workings. It seemed typical that when humans built a humanoid robot they didn’t build a very smart one, and they built him to do something as ridiculous as play football.

  He knew playing football was ridiculous, but it didn’t really affect him. He supposed that it was part of a common sense module, whatever little knowledge they gave him to get by and fit in with a team of normal human footballers. It was probably something like, the sky is blue (mostly), fires will burn him, and football is ridiculous. After a while of actually being a footballer, he thought about getting them to remove this one residual fact as it no longer made any sense for him to have. But he kept it, like a memento. He supposed maybe, if he was human, he’d have listened to it.

  


-

  


 He didn’t have a name for a long time. They called him Totti, which was relatively short and rather snappy. The crowd loved it, it fit in well with chants and rhymes with a bunch of words. It didn’t really sit right with him though, only having one name when others had two or even three. Whenever he had these thoughts he also got the urge to ring up the director and ask him to send over the technician who acted as his medic to tweak his internal workings so he no longer had them.

It was easier to just ask for a name though. After practice one day he walked up to Mazzone and just flat out asked.

“It’s not up to me,” Mazzone said, taken aback. “You’ll have to ask someone higher up.” He began to gather up cones, usually the ball boy’s job.

“They gave me a name already,” he clarified. “You know that. I am Totti, but perhaps I need another name, too.”

Mazzone squinted at him for a while. “You really want a first name, huh.”

He thought about it. “Yeah.”

Mazzone shook his head. He went back to picking up orange cones, and Totti fell in behind, dragging the sack of footballs with him. It would be nice to have a first name, but it wasn’t exactly essential. He was ready to let it go.

But Mazzone had turned around, abruptly, and looked him in the eye. Totti didn’t flinch. He doesn’t have that programmed. He didn’t even need to blink, so he didn’t. Mazzone flinched instead.

“Francesco,” he said. “It means free man.”

Then he gave the cones to Francesco, newly dubbed, and stalked away, hands stuck in his jacket pockets.

  


-

  


Vincenzo’s arrival was something of a revelation to Francesco. He fitted in well enough with the team before, but he hadn’t clicked with anyone, until Vincenzo appeared. Vincenzo didn’t seem to mind that Francesco was built for football and couldn’t feel the effects of alcohol- _believe it or not,_ _Vincenzo said_ , _that’s actually an advantage_ \- he persisted in tagging along with Francesco and periodically inviting himself to Francesco’s house.

  


“Do you eat?” Vincenzo asked. He was eating. Francesco glanced over at him, then glanced back at the television, where Juventus was playing Lazio.

“I can,” Francesco said. “I just don’t do it that often.”

“Do you have to take shits?” Vincenzo asked. He was still eating, eyes round and curious above his pizza.

“Why are you asking me this,” Francesco sighed. “I’m not your personal fucking robot, Montella.”

“But do you?”

“Fuck off.”

  


They played FIFA eventually. Vincenzo lost 5-1 and blamed it on Francesco communing with the TV or the game consoles through his robotic brain. Francesco told him it didn’t work like that. Vincenzo tackled him around the middle and Francesco retaliated, till they ended up on the carpet, Francesco sitting on Vincenzo to keep him down.  


He realised Vincenzo was laughing through the vibrations in his chest. Francesco turned his head and said, “What are you laughing at, you stupid motherfucker.”  


“You’re awfully human for a robot,” Vincenzo said. “You get mad all the time and you’re actually funny. I didn’t know robots could be funny.”

“I’m not that different,” Francesco said. “I don’t have to eat but I can. I can get hurt. I just get fixed easily. I have a personality, even if it’s manually constructed. God has a sense of humor.”

“God,” Vincenzo raised his eyebrows. “Is that what you call Sensi.”

Francesco rolls over Vincenzo and lay down on his back. “No.”

“What about a heart?” Vincenzo asked. He propped himself up on one elbow, putting a hand on Francesco’s chest. “Do you have one?”  
  


At least this answer he knew. “It’s not there,” he said, dragging Vincenzo’s hand further down onto his lower belly. Vincenzo kept his hand there, as though feeling for a pulse.

Then he goes lower. Francesco sits up, getting carpet burn on his palms. Vincenzo looked at him, a challenging look. Francesco didn’t know what comes after this.  


“They gave you a working cock?” Vincenzo said. He hadn’t stopped moving his hand.  


Francesco laughed, and blinked, and laughed again. He’s sure he’d laughed before this, but he couldn’t remember when. Maybe it was the first time he’d scored, easy, laughing at the knowledge and realisation of what he was built to do. Maybe it was the first time they shouted for him in the stadium, clapping when he ran onto the pitch.

  


“Seems a pity not to use it,” Vincenzo said. He leaned in and kissed Francesco. This close, he could see Vincenzo’s eyelashes, the freckle on the crease of his eye. He tasted vaguely like tomatoes.

  


He kissed Vincenzo back instead of answering. They hadn’t made him a thinker, Rome, they made him a robot who can feel. And so that’s what he did.

  


-

  


Sensi wasn’t god, despite having him made in the first place. The engineers who drafted and built him weren’t gods either. He didn’t know who was, but he had an inkling.

  


-

  


Later, much later, when Vincenzo was leaving because he needed more play time and because in Rome, Totti came first, he said, “They’ll never let you go, Francesco.”

Francesco was lacing up his boots, sitting on the stairs outside the changing rooms.

“I know,” he said. He was made in the absence of choice and desire, save one. He was made.

Vincenzo shook his head. “You’re a pawn to them. To be used and discarded when you break down and can’t be fixed anymore. You’re a machine.”

When Francesco looked up, he was gone.

  


-

  


The city of Rome built him to serve them.

 

This was what they told him: _You are a son of Rome. You are a player for Rome. Whatever you are, is whatever we are._

  


-

  


He played beautifully. It was thoughtless, how it came to him. It was poetry, and everywhere in the world people wrote about him and football clubs all over the world scrambled for their own robots but he was one of the first, enduring on and on through countless changes. Neural networks? Interfaces? The connections between constructed datasets built into his framework? It didn’t make sense to him, but he couldn’t really make sense of a lot. The brain they gave him wasn’t exactly Einstein’s. He couldn’t even convert binary to decimal. It was kind of a mystery, what they built.

  


A machine that plays beautiful football, thoughtlessly. Like a miracle.

  


-

  


“I didn’t actually mean that,” Vincenzo said, back in Rome again for a brief time. He looked older. Francesco didn’t, the cosmetics of skin was apparently not the focus of his existence. Vincenzo looked taken aback, a little, when they first meet. Perhaps it finally drove home what separated him and Francesco.

“What,” Francesco said. He didn’t make it a question.

“You remember,” Vincenzo said, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t tell me you don’t.”

“Yes,” Francesco said. He patted Vincenzo on the back. “I know.”  


“I’m sorry,” Vincenzo said. It felt like he was apologizing for a whole lot more than what he said that one time.

“What are you sorry for?” Francesco said. They walk out of the tunnel and Francesco shielded his eyes against the sun. He felt Vincenzo’s hand on his shoulder, holding on.

  


-

  


“Will you have to retire when they can’t update you anymore?” Vincenzo asked before he left for Catania. Francesco wonders if he’ll ever stop asking him disturbing questions.  

“Probably.”

“So will you be dead?”

“No. Yes. Maybe.”

“Could you go play somewhere else?”

“I can’t leave, remember,” Francesco said. “I was built for Rome.”

“That’s not what I heard,” Vincenzo said. He rapped on the door twice before turning to go.  “Ask Palotta.”

  


-

  


“You can leave,” Palotta said immediately after Francesco asked. “Do you want to?”

Francesco opened his mouth to reply, then realized he didn’t know. No one had said he could leave before asking him if he wanted to. He felt like that wasn’t right, somehow, like something somewhere in his internal workings wasn’t connecting as it should.

“I need to think about it.”

Palotta gave him a look as though he knew exactly what Francesco’s robot brain was built to do, and it wasn’t thinking. Francesco left, leaving his office door open because he knew it would irritate him.

  


 He doesn’t have a heartbeat, just a low hum where his intestines should be. He wanted to go somewhere in the city, maybe find a stone pine to think under. Maybe that was conducive to thinking. He wasn’t sure. What was he, exactly? Amongst the first of his kind? A robot built to do things, belonging, never owning, his body performing miracles on a grassy field.

  


-

  


The city of Rome built him to love them.

  


No one had told him this except the crowd in the Stadio Olimpico. That was how he knew. The first time he laughed, the first time he felt a ball under his feet, the first time everything inside him clicked as it should and worked as it should. In the stadium, in red and yellow.

  
  


-

  


“I’ll stay,” he said to Palotta. “Just promise me you’ll pull me out of hibernation when you figure out how to upgrade my code. In the future. Just in case.”

“You’ll have it in writing.”

“Thank you.”

  
  


-

  
  
  


The city of Rome built him to love them.

So he loved, and stayed, and was free.

  


 

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for reading! <3


End file.
